Media Muddle: Gross Pools, Due Credit & Stupid Questions

A few bits and pieces of stuff that caught my eye lately in the Vegas-related media:

* Nothing makes me happier than when a local freelance writer breaks a good, enterprising story out from under the established press, and that's what Melissa Arseniuk did on Sunday in The Daily with her probe of the cleanliness of the pool water at several Vegas "day club" venues. It's thoroughly disgusting but also a pretty great idea and one that it's fairly unlikely either major media company -- or Arseniuk's former employer Vegas Seven for that matter -- would do as it would put at risk one of the few steady advertising revenue streams that have held up through the recession. Nicely done, although did she have to invoke the most predictable of Vegas cliches in her lead? You have that awesome a story idea, it deserves equally original writing.

* Anyone who cares about Vegas and Vegas business matters ought to be subscribed and listening to the Vegas Gang podcast to begin with. But if you need convincing, pick up their superb and frank interview with M Resort developer Anthony Marnell III.

* On that same VG episode, former In Business Las Vegas editor Jeff Simpson noted the meager Vegas media response to the passing of Terry Lanni and used it as a mark of why it's so important for people who care about Vegas -- and cover it -- to pay attention to what's going on on blogs such as Two Way Hard Three and VegasTripping. (I'd add in Stiffs & Georges, too, as required visiting.) Of course, I agree, but Jeff left out one more important piece of it: The established media also must start to acknowledge when online publications break news. Norm Clarke of the R-J is the only one who does so consistently. It was VegasTripping.Com that broke the Aria Legionnaires' disease story, but for whatever reason Jon Ralston would rather give the scoop credit to his hated rival the Review-Journal (?!?!?) than the correct outlet. Lookit:

That's at least two errors in two sentences for Ralston, who loves to mock the R-J for its mistakes but won't ever correct these. First, VT had this up at 8:50 a.m. and the R-J had this up at 9:46 a.m., so VT wins. Oddly, Ralston should have known because he linked to the VT posting. But, also, VT's Chuck Monster is not a local. The blog is based in California. Oopsie.

* Speaking of David McKee, he now has my blessing to be upset with Brian Greenspun for not memorializing Terry Lanni in his Sunday column. In fact, neither newspaper even bothered to write an editorial about Lanni and Vegas Inc just reran Liz Benston's first-day obit. A shameful, disrespectful goodbye for a monumental figure. I was glad to see Howard Stutz follow up with a report about Lanni's memorial service in Southern California, but why wasn't that in the newspaper, too?

* A few things I learned from other journalists this week:

• In Nevada, 75 percent of families choose to donate organs when loved ones who never indicated a preference are in life-ending condition.
• The Nevada desert is used to approximate Mars' surface.
• China had this awesome-looking fake Apple store for a few minutes.
  
• Free public wi-fi can be dangerous for the businesses that furnish it, too
• Laura Myers is a gifted writer as well as a nice lady, and here's the proof
• Far-right R-J columnist Glenn Cook can be human and funny, too.

* In journalism school, you learn never to open a story with a question. I'm OK with opening with questions -- I never do it, but I don't always hate it -- but I do think there ought to be a rule that you never open a story with a dumb question. You know, like when J. Patrick Coolican of the Las Vegas Sun writes:

Throw this onto the ever-growing pile of the baffling: Why is there no discussion about blight on the Strip? Why is there no sense of concern — and with it, fresh ideas — about the long stretches of our most important economic and cultural asset that are pocked with half-finished projects or just empty land?

Is he kidding? Maybe this goes back to Simpson's point about Vegas journalists needing to pay attention to what's going on online. "No discussion?" There's discussion constantly on the Vegas-related podcasts, at least, including Vegas Gang and The Strip. There was discussion of it in the MSM, too, when Steve Wynn paid to put up trees in front of the stalled Echelon to improve the view a little, when Sheldon Adelson put a wrap on the stalled St. Regis condos and Caesars Entertainment finished the exterior of the stalled Octavius Tower and when MGM Resorts finished the exterior of the vexed Harmon and when the Stratosphere CEO told me for my LVW column that what I dubbed as Decay Alley at the north end of the Strip post-Sahara would be rough on them.

Which is to say, there's been discussion. No, Patrick, you're not the first to notice this. You may have an interesting idea for what to do up there, although I've never heard the many tourists I hear from regularly suggest what Vegas is missing is an outdoor market where they can buy crafts and crap in 105-degree heat. But when you open like that, you show how little you pay attention to the discourse going on all around you.

* Norm Clarke is a maestro at finding the Vegas angle of just about any celebrity death, and there seem to be an awful lot of 'em. So here's what he came up with regarding Amy Winehouse. Amazing, really.

* In case you missed it, I raved about Andrew Kiraly's novel Crit on The Strip last week. It was our Top Secret Tourist Tip of the Week for July 20, too. I read it in about four hours and I'm a slow reader. Buy it.

Sun's new political ace staying in Reno

As a brave anonymous commenter to my Tuesday post on the Sun's staffing woes chided, the Las Vegas Sun recently told its staff it was hiring soon-to-be-former Reno Gazette-Journal political ace Anjeanette Damon. She starts after the June 8 primary.

There's a reason I left this out of that post. Yes, I had heard this -- though I hadn't seen the postings about it, true -- but nobody could tell me where Damon would be working.

I was unable -- until now -- to get an answer to the question. She's staying in Reno. She just called me back to tell me so. And no, the Sun's statehouse scribe David McGrath Schwartz is not coming back to Las Vegas.

That means that the Sun will have two political writers in Carson City and, as of now, none in Vegas after Patrick Coolican leaves for the L.A. Weekly on June 8.

I've no criticism of Damon's remaining in the north, territory she knows well. But it still means that, unless the Sun poaches someone from the R-J, they'll be hiring from outside not just the paper but the state. I'm sure whoever they get will do great -- the clearly have a knack for identifying talent -- but the months between June 8 and the November election aren't really a time for on-the-job training. They will be some of the most important political months in the state's history.

P.S. As I responded to that kindhearted anonymous commenter, Jon Ralston doesn't fit into this equation because Ralston's primary duties are as host of his daily TV show and author of his daily e-mail blast. He writes a column a couple times a week for the Sun and I'm sure he offers a tip or two to Sun beat writers, but he is not actively involved in the day-to-day coverage of politics and does not write lengthy think pieces on trends, people or issues.

That's what we lose with the disappearance of Mascaro, Coolican and Mishak. We get some of that back from Damon, but not as much as we need. And they still have no D.C. bureau now, but ex-R-J political writer Molly Ball did just update her Facebook status to say she has arrived in Alexandria, Va. Just saying.

Sun's Political Team Shake-Up

Some major changes are happening at the Las Vegas Sun right when what's arguably the most important U.S. Senate race in Nevada history is heating up:

* Lisa Mascaro, the Washington correspondent for the paper, is moving over to the Los Angeles Times' DC bureau. That marks the second straight poaching of Vegas talent by the Times for its coverage of national politics; Kathleen Hennessey, formerly of the Associated Press here, was hired last year. What's sad here is that after years of outstanding work, Mascaro's swan song was a painful Sunday top-of-fold puff piece on all the goodies Harry Reid has brought to Nevada. Many inside the Sun newsroom have grumbled over the Greenspuns' blatantly political use of its news reporters in that instance, and it's really too bad that Mascaro's magnificent tenure ended with such a thing. Somehow Erin Neff and her phony journalism watchdog site didn't mind that, but woe be unto the Review-Journal if they had written, say, a feature about something good Sen. Ensign has done for the state.

* J. Patrick Coolican, the lead Vegas-based politics writer for the paper, heads to the Los Angeles Weekly shortly after the June 8 primary. There he will be blogging and reuniting with Drex Heikes, the former Sun city editor who led Alexandra Berzon to her Pulitzer Prize a year ago.

Now what? Well, there's Jon Ralston, of course, but as huge a shadow as he casts over coverage of politics, he still can't be everywhere sitting in on everything. And there's Michael Mishak, who I hear may end up heading to D.C. to take Mascaro's gig. Either way, losing that much of the braintrust -- and to competing publications -- will no doubt harm the quality of the Sun's coverage.

Meanwhile, closer to my heart, my dear Petcast co-host Emily Richmond, by far the most knowledgeable education reporter in this city, is absconding as well, at least temporarily. She departs to the University of Michigan in late August for a eight-month stint as a prestigious Knight-Wallace Fellow. That's amazing and I couldn't be more proud of her, but it also means that the Sun goes into the critical 2011 Legislative Session and possibly a new Clark County School District superintendent search without its ace.

That Knight-Wallace Fellow thing might sound familiar because that's where the Review-Journal's former political beat reporter Molly Ball has been for the past eight months with her husband, former R-J courts scribe David Kihara. Ball, of course, was a frequent fill-in guest-host on The Petcast, which must explain how both of these women landed the gig.

Ball tells me via e-mail they're not coming back to Vegas, but maybe she'd be interested in covering D.C. for the Sun? Trouble is, she already worked for the Sun and then defected to the Review-Journal, so who knows if that door continues to revolve or not. In lieu of that, send Mishak to D.C. if he'll go and then bring back Abigail Goldman or Timothy Pratt, the two best reporters fired in the Sun purge.

Bad idea: Getting an out-of-towner or rookie to stand in Ralston's shadow. I know, I did that once. In 1998, I was a 26-year-old sent by the R-J to cover the county government beat. Ralston was still an R-J columnist then. It was impossible to get traction on the beat in part because I was inexperienced and easy to manipulate but also because Ralston was an institution to be respected and feared by the political machinery of these parts. Inside sources could curry favor with me with minimal benefit as I'd in all likelihood be gone by the millennium (I was) whereas Ralston, they knew, would always be there (and still is). It's a thankless job any which way with this 800-pound gorilla in the midst, but it's important that the Sun's political writers in Vegas be seasoned and savvy enough to earn Ralston's respect as a worthy part of his team.

No word yet how we'll handle Emily's absence on our pet show. Anyone out there who loves parrots and bulldogs and who already has a podcast that's fading want to jump in for eight months?

Sunday Newspaper Musings

Sigh. Review-Journal publisher Sherm Frederick opted to lay off the masturbation stories this week, so there's only a couple of things to point out from today's newspapers:

* Omar Sofradzija in the R-J has a terrific column looking back at the 2000 predictions by a transportation expert on the Las Vegas Monofail. The expert had every aspect of the miserable future nailed down pat and Las Vegas' Mormon Mafia rolled right over them and built the thing anyhow. Oh well.

* It's kind of funny to see a front-page "think piece" by the Las Vegas Sun's J. Patrick Coolican pondering whether Hillary Clinton's negatives may doom her presidential bid on the same day that the no fewer than THREE rock-ribbed conservative columnists (Charles Krauthammer, Rick Lowry and David Brooks) are published in the combined R-J and Sun all begrudgingly praising the senator's preparedness for the presidency in one form or another. When she's even winning over the right-wing chattering classes, it does seem that speculation about the hatred she stirs in people who would never vote Democratic anyway is last year's story.

* I got my first mainstream review for "Gay Vegas" today. It's from the Chicago Tribune. See it here.